Six teenagers meet at a summer hotel in 1958. It is at a time in life when they are full of energy and high spirits as they optimistically plan their futures. Libidos are also running high and that leads to a clash for sexual attention between two of the characters that over time affects them all. Together with two other teenagers, who spend the summer of 1958 on an adventure-filled student tour to Europe, the eight characters forge lifelong friendships that are traced over the sixty-year span of the novel. Their ties are, however. frequently put to the test as they wrestle with clashes they never anticipated in their youth. At the professional level, these include scandals resulting from one of the friend’s involvement in the proposed construction of a major sports complex in Toronto, and in the city’s bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. At the same time, in their private lives. the characters must cope with social mores that change radically over the decades the novel encompasses, and with illicit love affairs, divorce, and attempted suicide.  All The Way is an entertaining novel that uses both humorous and dramatic episodes to explore the shifting nature of social norms and the complex and uncertain foundations on which friendships are often built.